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GAO Sustains For Failure To Set Aside For Small Business

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 10.20.04

In Information Ventures, Inc. (Oct. 8, 2004), GAO sustained a pre-award protest of an unrestricted procurement because the agency failed to take reasonable efforts to ascertain whether at least two small businesses were capable of performing the work, and, in fact, that the agency ignored known information that there were at least two small businesses that could have done so. Lesson learned from this case is that small businesses should carefully monitor the issuance of unrestricted procurements and object prior to the submission of proposals (due to strict GAO timeliness rules) if they believe that multiple small business are capable of performing the work.

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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25

Defining Claim Terms by Implication: Lexicography Lessons from Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation

Claim construction is a key stage of most patent litigations, where the court must decide the meaning of any disputed terms in the patent claims.  Generally, claim terms are given their plain and ordinary meaning except under two circumstances: (1) when the patentee acts as its own lexicographer and sets out a definition for the term; and (2) when the patentee disavows the full scope of the term either in the specification or during prosecution.  Thorner v. Sony Comput. Ent. Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012).  The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp. highlights that patentees can act as their own lexicographers through consistent, interchangeable usage of terms across the specification, effectively defining terms by implication....